"What's To Come As Government Surveillance Sunsets With 2017?"

As December raced by with Republicans in Congress doing all they could to keep momentum behind their tax-reform bill, which passed with all the pageantry and histrionics such legislation can muster, they weren’t able to vote on the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017.

Even a last-minute rush wouldn’t have worked, as Senators Rand Paul (R-KY)and Ron Wyden (D-OR) threatened to stop the Senate with a filibuster if leadership brought the controversial surveillance powers up for a vote.

The FISA Amendments Act allows the National Security Agency (NSA) to view and copy emails and phone calls. It’s designed to let the NSA look for terrorists and other bad guys by spying on non-U.S. citizens, but it also allows the intelligence agencies to eavesdrop on the communications of an unknown number of Americans. They record and store these emails and more in a database law-enforcement agencies can search without first getting a warrant. These are often called “backdoor searches,” as they bypass Fourth Amendment protections of our privacy.

If you are wondering how many Americans our government has listened in on, sorry, the intelligence agencies told Congress they can’t say just how many American citizens have been eavesdropped on by the government (without warrants). Despite this, they asked Congress to simply renew the controversial section 702 of the Act before it expires at the end of December—they even asked that it be made permanent law.

Congress might have done that too if it wasn’t for the fact they recently found out they have political skin in the game. The recent “unmaskings” showed them that even a congressman’s conversations with a foreign official might go public with their names un-redacted. Then, even if the member of Congress didn’t do anything wrong, what they said and whom they spoke with could quickly be taken out of context by the media outlets that root for the opposing team.

This was why Sen. Paul said, “We cannot live in fear of our own intelligence community. They have such power to suck up every bit of every transmission, every communication we ever made. We can’t just have them willy-nilly releasing that to the public.”

Though Congress tried to pass a compromise—the “USA Liberty Act of 2017”—it and other legislation stalled.

Just before Christmas the House Rules Committee officially postponed its vote on the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017.

In mid-December Sen. Paul tweeted: “I will actively oppose and filibuster any long term extension of warrantless searches of American citizens.”

Part of the reason this law was allowed to sunset is it really didn’t. Lawyers in the Trump administration have argued that a one-year certification for the spy program keeps it active until April 2018. Whether their legal interpretation is right or not, it certainly gives the NSA legal cover to keep looking at these communications into the spring. This also gives Congress more time to consider how much power to give U.S. intelligence agencies.

Part of the reason this law was allowed to sunset is it really didn’t. Lawyers in the Trump administration have argued that a one-year certification for the spy program keeps it active until April 2018. Whether their legal interpretation is right or not, it certainly gives the NSA legal cover to keep looking at these communications into the spring. This also gives Congress more time to consider how much power to give U.S. intelligence agencies.

As far as I understand, the current plan is to continue unabated because total surveillance with no warrants or oversight is "totally legal".

*cough* 4th Amendment... must not exist in their world.

1776 > 1984

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